**Source:** PSS vol. 49

Dear Comrade!

You dispute my remark about the possibility of transforming the given imperialist war into a national one.

Your argument? "We shall have to defend the imperialist fatherland"...

Is that logical? If the fatherland remains "i m p e r i a l i s t," then how can the war be national??

In my view, talk of "possibilities" has been theoretically incorrectly introduced by Radek and § of the five theses of the "International" 392.

Marxism rests on the ground of facts, not possibilities.

A Marxist must put in the premises of his policy only facts precisely and indisputably proven.

That is exactly what our (party) resolution does*.

When instead of it they present "impossibility," I answer: incorrect, un-Marxist, a template. All sorts of transformations are possible.

And I cite a historical fact (the wars of 1792-1815). I take an example to illustrate the possibility of something similar now (with development in reverse).

In my view, y o u are confusing the possible (which I did not start talking about!!) with the real, when you think that recognition of possibility allows one to change tactics. This is the height of illogicality.

* See Works, 5th ed., vol. 26, pp. 161-167. Ed.

I recognize it as possible that a Social-Democrat will transform into a bourgeois and vice versa.

An indisputable truth. Does it follow from this that I shall now recognize a given bourgeois, Plekhanov, as a Social-Democrat? No, it does not. But as a possibility? Let us wait for this transformation to become reality.

Only that. It is precisely in "methodology" (of which you write) that one must distinguish the possible from the actual.

All sorts of transformations are possible, even that of a fool into a wise man, but such a transformation becomes actual rarely. And on the basis of one "possibility" of such a transformation I shall not cease to consider such a fool a fool.

Your perplexities about "twofold" education are unclear to me. I have set out the example concretely (Norway) both in "Enlightenment"* and in the article against Kiev**.

You do not answer to this!! You take a completely unclear example about Poland.

This is not "twofold" education, but the reduction of different things to one denominator, the leading [of roads] to one Moscow from Nizhny and from Smolensk.

A Swedish Social-Democrat who does not stand for the freedom of Norway's separation is a scoundrel. You do not dispute this. The Norwegian can be both for separation and against it. Is unity on such a question obligatory for all Social-Democrats of all countries? No.

That would be a template, a ridiculous template, a ridiculous pretension.

We have never accused Polish Social-Democrats (I wrote this in "Enlightenment") of the fact that they are against the independence of Poland.

Instead of simple, clear, theoretically indisputable argumentation: one cannot now stand for such a democratic demand (independent Poland) which in practice subjects us completely to one of the imperialist powers or coalitions

* See "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (Works, 5th ed., vol. 25, pp. 289-294). Ed.

** See "A Caricature of Marxism and 'Imperialist Economism'" (Works, 5th ed., vol. 30, pp. 99-106). Ed.